Iran’s state-run media has portrayed the comments as evidence of a “schism” between the secretary and the White House, yet President Obama has alternated between bellicose accusations and vague conciliatory statements in his own Iran policy, while Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has previous said the administration doesn’t expect diplomacy to work with Iran. In that light, it seems that Gates’ comments are right in the wheelhouse of America’s current foreign policy position, if expressed quite a bit more frankly than has been recently the case.